IGN Music: I'm most familiar with your work as part of the Cris Velasco/Sascha Dikiciyan team. What was it like working apart from your long time creative partner?

Cris Velasco: Well, although the majority of our work is together we actually do work independently on a number of projects throughout the year. However, I was still able to sneak Sascha into the Jericho score. He was very busy wrapping up another project so I asked him to set aside just a bit of time to help me on a few of the more epic pieces. They turned out great and are some of my favorite cues from the score. Don't worry though. Sascha and I have at least three other big scores coming out this summer and have lined up a couple of really exciting games for next year already.

IGN Music: What is the Jericho score comprised of? Is it an organic (i.e. real) score utilizing an actual choir and orchestra or is it a synthesized score (i.e. electronic)?

Cris Velasco: The choir is all real. There's even a live boy soprano in there too. The rest of the orchestra is all sample based though except for the inclusion of some live string FX from my own personal library.

IGN Music: If you did employ and actual choir and orchestra, who was it and how large were they?

Cris Velasco: I had a 30 voice mixed choir for this score. They were all amazing singers made up from the San Francisco opera. Everyone was already used to working together as an ensemble so I was able to get a very nice performance out of them. Brooks Fisher was my boy soprano and to me, has really become the voice of Jericho.

IGN Music: Where did the actual recording of the Jericho score take place?

Cris Velasco: I recorded the score at the famous Skywalker Sound. Leslie Ann Jones was my engineer up there and she did a fantastic job with the recording.

IGN Music: Over how many days did you record the score (depending on if you used a real choir/orchestra or not).

Cris Velasco: There were two days of recording. Everyone worked so fast that I was able to come away from those sessions with tons of material.

IGN Music: How early were you brought onto the project?

Cris Velasco: Well&#Array;quite late actually. There was a bit of a mix up. Even though Clive had requested me from very early on, there were some scheduling issues that left me with only around 3 ¿ weeks to come up with two hours of music. As much as I wanted to, there was no way I could have done this on my own. So I assembled a small team to help me out. Luckily, I was also granted a bit of additional time at the end to help wrap things up.

IGN Music: How much access to the game and various assets were you given? Did you get to play through the game or did you compose the music off of preliminary artwork and demos?

Cris Velasco:Codemasters was nice enough to loan me an Xbox 360 devkit. They also gave me frequent updates of the latest build of the game so that I was able to play through the game front to back as often as I needed to. I can't overstate how helpful this was. This is definitely something I'm going to be pushing for in the future with other developers.

IGN Music: How closely did you work with Barker? Did he give you a basic blueprint of what kind of music he wanted or did he pretty much give you carte blanche to do what you wanted?

Cris Velasco: Clive and I had a series of meetings on the direction of the score as soon as I was officially hired on. He had a very definite vision as to what the music should sound like. Besides needing to have a few musical themes that would build throughout the game, the bulk of the music was really to be based on either a reverential, religious tone or a disturbing, atonal soundscape. There are many places where I actually combined the two that resulted in a very creepy texture. For example, I would record the choir singing one of these long chord clusters. They would then introduce some very slow movement within this texture so that it felt almost alive in a way. I then did another pass with the choir (men only this time) and had them sing a very solemn Gregorian chant. This was then layered on top of the atonal choir which resulted in a very disturbing sound. Other than that, Clive made sure to let me know that he trusted me to find an appropriate sound for the game.